My #IcarusDeception

It is all potential torture. Hearing what you could do and knowing you could have done it. When I listened to Linchpin a few years ago it sounded like the dissertation I would have written for my masters degree if I had be able to finish it (the degree that is.)

The work of that masters has stayed with me for ever, I notice more because I sat in those classes and read those books. The actual bit of paper means very little to me so I don't mind not having it. The ability to look behind the curtain and see more than I did before is priceless, if slightly uncomfortable.

Then the Icarus Deception comes along. Ever since I read 1984 and Brave New World at the age of 12 I have suspected we are being suckered into something, I did not really know what "mass" was when I was younger but I knew there was something I did not like about shopping malls.

I was sad that the little shops were closing and the big shops were taking over, these were not really more convenient - I knew we were being sold a concept. The notion of shit holiday camps, more TV and Peter Waterman music sent me into a spin.

Somewhere along the line I took some soma and tried to fit in, I did not want to fit in and I knew I was surrendering. I am still not really sure what it is I am meant to do but it is not to fit in.

Wearing grey suits, going shopping, buying a bigger TV every year and going to Disney has always made me lunge for the nearest cyanide tablet. The fear of "doing nothing" for 30 years and waking up one day sitting in a Harvester restaurant with a crap beer in my hand and not knowing my wife and children who are at the table with me is too much to not take action now.

Not fitting in does not mean being a terrorist, having pink hair or hating society. To me it means reaching deep down inside and sharing my art, taking risks and seeing what works, putting my flag in the ground and saying this is it people! Are you in?

In the last month the more I have looked inside and cut down to my core the clearer everything has become. This is not something I have done on my own, but it has come from me having the courage to ask what is really going on. It is painful, inconvenient and full of possibility.

What I would say is that when you go in this direction everyone around you shows up 10 times brighter than they did before.

This is why you need to build your tribe before you need them, because you never know when you might need them, or they might need you.